Whether it’s troops playing on an improvised course in Iraq or WWII POWs who played between the Stalag barracks, golf has a history in uniform. For this issue of Kingdom, John Strege, noted golf writer and author of the book When War Played Through, looks at the game’s role on the front lines of the World Wars

Red Cross benefit golf tourney parapharnalia at the USGA Museum

Normally he would have been standing on a golf course in the sun, but on June 7, 1944—D-Day Plus One—Bobby Jones was going ashore at cold, wet Normandy. Part of a mission to secure an airfield 20 miles inland, the 42-year-old married father of three could easily have remained stateside, far from the line of fire. But that would not have been a reflection of the man, nor the game he had come to represent.

Through both World Wars, the U.S. found an unlikely ally in a relatively tranquil pastime: Golf. Not a largely popular game in the first half of the 20th century, nor one regarded as particularly egalitarian, the sport nevertheless proved to be a substantially benevolent friend. So much so that in World War II it ultimately contributed more to the Allied war effort than any other sport, and did so in a variety of ways; private members planted victory gardens on golf course properties, the likes of Army Capt. Ben Hogan gave lessons to wounded soldiers, and so on.

In fact, at almost every turn golf was there: on government letterhead, in Stalags and certainly in war-zone conversations. When Bob Hope took his USO show to North Africa early in 1943, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower greeted him with the question, “How’s your golf?”

Games—notwithstanding Eisenhower’s infatuation with one of them—tend to be frivolous by nature, a point that can go missing in a sports-crazed nation. War is an emphatic reminder that when your country is on the line games belong a bit lower on the priority rack, though there are always a few people in dire need of a dose of perspective. Case in point: A few members of the media expressed their unhappiness that, in response to America joining the war, the United States Golf Association canceled the 1942 U.S. Open. “But, in gentlemanly Ivy League accents,” wrote renowned golf writer, Herb Graffis, “the USGA silenced criticism by the rebuttal, ‘What to hell, don’t you guys know your country is in a war?’”

For the troops
If the professional game was off, there was no widespread objection to playing the game on a recreational level. Indeed, golf was officially sanctioned by the government, represented by John B. Kelly, the assistant director of civilian defense in charge of physical fitness and an Olympic gold medalist in rowing. (Also, we should note, father of Grace Kelly.)

“Eight million people will be going into the armed forces,” Kelly said to the USGA. “My job is to look after the 124 million who won’t or can’t go. They can keep fit by playing golf.” On Dec. 24, 1941, he sent a letter to golf associations, urging them to expand their golf programs “to meet the requirements of individual and collective physical fitness. No work can operate efficiently without regular periods of recreation. And America, now more than ever, cannot risk inefficiency when wartime production requires peak performance.”

So America played on, for a cause greater than its own simple enjoyment. And in addition to gaining fitness, golfers found creative ways to earn money for the war effort—paying friendly on-course wagers in war bonds, for instance, or agreeing to pay small fines for hitting balls out of bounds. Nearly 3,000 tournaments were hosted by more than 500 private clubs, public courses and golf associations, all for the benefit of the American Red Cross. In 1942, golf raised in excess of $1 million for war relief agencies, the PGA contributing a quarter of that. The National Golf Foundation, meanwhile, estimated that the government would collect $30 million in taxes on money spent on golf in 1942 alone.

The game had taken its cue from World War I, when golf focused on raising money for the war effort in myriad ways, among them auctioning the services of celebrity caddies. Bobby Jones, Chick Evans, Walter Hagen and Francis Ouimet were among those who hoisted bags on behalf of the war effort.

Walter Travis, a three-time winner of the U.S. Amateur, played an exhibition match with Finlay Douglas that netted $5,000 toward helping win World War I, then auctioned the putter he had used in winning the British Amateur and raised an additional $1,700. Evans, the reigning U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur champion at the time, played more than 50 exhibitions in six months, traveling more than 26,000 miles in the process. Evans’ exhibitions helped raise $250,000, according to the Western Golf Association’s estimate.

Thus, when World War II arrived, golf quickly identified its responsibility and acted on it. Courses across America devoted portions of their property to victory gardens in which vegetables were grown to help alleviate food shortages brought on by the war. Many of these gardens were situated precariously close to fairways, putting them in play for wayward shots. Some have even claimed that these gardens begat the familiar refrain for a ball settling into any overgrown patch: “Hitting into the cabbage.”

Exclusive country clubs that typically were sealed tight to keep the outside world out leapt at the opportunity to contribute however they could, many of them warmly opening their courses to armed service personnel. Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C., was given over to a new government agency, the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA. The OSS used Congressional as a training ground. The prestigious Philadelphia Country Club readily agreed to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to use its Spring Mill Course, site of the U.S. Open in 1939, to test a chemical it had developed to discolor grass as a way to camouflage it.

Then there was Augusta National, which after the Masters in 1942 closed for the duration of the War. At Bobby Jones’ urging, the membership built a practice range and putting green at Camp Gordon, then supplied it with equipment. It was subsequently dubbed the Bobby Jones Driving Range.

The game even became a lifeline for those captured or injured. Stalag Luft III, the prisoner-of-war camp for flying personnel made famous by the film “The Great Escape,” housed captured Allied Air Force officers, one of whom received a woman’s mashie in a Red Cross parcel one day. Some of the prisoners, including Pat Ward-Thomas, an Englishman who later would become a renowned golf writer, began to fashion their own golf balls from whatever scrap materials were available, including crepe rubber from the soles of shoes. The covers typically were made from shoe leather cut into figure eights and stitched with homemade thread.

The prisoners laid out a rudimentary golf course between the barracks on which they wiled away the days playing matches, helping to fend off boredom and even insanity.

Ward-Thomas, incidentally, brought one of those golf balls home with him. In the ’60s, he once asked Jack Nicklaus to hit it with a driver. Nicklaus declined. “I was afraid I might break it,” Nicklaus said, concerned that he would destroy an historic artifact that today sits in the USGA museum in Far Hills, N.J.

NATIONAL TREASURES: GOLF BALLS MADE FROM COMBAT BOOT RUBBERAND LEATHER BY PRISONERS OF WAR AT STALAG III

When fighting’s done
Dale Bourisseau was a recreational golfer who lost a part of his right leg in a land-mine explosion in the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy in 1943. An active athletic man, Bourisseau fell into a depression from which he emerged only when a friend brought a golf club to him in the hospital. Anyone who has played the game can’t resist the urge to pick up a club and waggle it, and neither could Bourisseau. When he was fitted with a prosthesis, he ventured out to a course to see whether he might still be able to play. He could. It occurred to him that the game might similarly snap other amputees from their lethargy or depression. In 1947, he invited a group of them to a course in Aurora, Ohio, an outing from which the National Amputee Golf Association was born. Today, its membership numbers more than 2,500.

Golf, both during and after the World Wars, has proved a strong ally indeed. Whether through fund raising for the war effort, emotional support for those in need or direct involvement—as in the case of Bobby Jones—the game and its players continue even today in maintaining dignity and strength in the face of overwhelmingly difficult challenges. Hemingway defined that as “grace”—certainly an attribute of our game to which we might also add, “patriotic.”